Could this be the resting ground of the legendary army of Persian King Cambyses II?  It’s long been the belief that the King’s 50,000 strong army had been buried during a sandstorm in the Sahara Desert 2,500 years ago and now twin brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castigliani may well have discovered the site.

According to Herodotus, the Greek historian who was around from about 485-425 BC, Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, sent an army from Thebes to attack the Siwa Oasis in 525 BC.  His plan was to destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun (see picture below) when the priests there got a bit rucky and refused to legitimise Cambyses II’s claim to Egypt.  (Oracles, by the way, were the places to go when you needed a bit of divine intervention and were held to be the next best thing to sliced bread in ancient Egypt.  They were believed to be manifestations of the gods that could see into the future – basically an ancient version of Gypsy Rose’s crystal ball!).

Apparently, after walking for seven days in the desert the army arrived at an oasis (which historians believe was El-Kharga, 120 miles west of the Nile in the Libyan Desert) and after they left, a sandstorm erupted and they were never seen again.  In fact, Herodotus did go on to write that a strong and deadly wind came from the south and brought with it a mass of sand which covered up the troops and caused them to disappear so it seems logical that the Castiglioni brothers could well have discovered what would have been the legendary site.

The brothers have been researching the army for the last 13 years and this has involved five expeditions into the desert.  It was while they were working with their team close to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt that they spotted a partially buried pot and some sun bleached human bones.  The brothers then noticed a rock around 100 ft long and about 6 ft high close by which could have been used as a shelter from the sandstorm.

The team took a closer look around the rock and found a bronze dagger and several arrow tips which may not sound particularly fantastic to a lot of us but it was incredibly exciting for the archaeologists as they were the first Achaemenid objects discovered in the desert close to Siwa, the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia being in existence at the time of Cambyses.  It was also an exciting find insofar as Angelo and Alfredo were concerned as this was the first archaeological evidence of Herodotus’s story – (apologies for the bad grammar here; Triond wouldn’t accept Herodotus followed by an apostrophe but would only allow it through if I followed the apostrophe with another S).  

Amongst the intrepid explorers who tried to solve the mystery over the centuries was Alexander the Great, some two centuries after the army disappeared, and more latterly Count Laszlo Almasy, a Hungarian aristocrat on whom the novel The English Patient was based. 

This isn’t the first major discovery by Angelo and Alfredo however. Around 20 years ago they discovered the lost Egyptian city of Berenike Panchrysos which was mentioned by Pliny the Elder.  I wonder where their next treasure map will lead them?